Cairo

I was up at a reasonable time this morning and finished my packing before going to breakfast because today we were flying down to Luxor. When I got back to my room the cleaners were there so I took my bags out and went down to wait in the lounge. Sam joined me later and we ordered a taxi for 12.30pm. We got our bags loaded onto the taxi and set off for the airport in what should have been plenty of time. We hadn’t however, reckoned on the bad traffic and it took us half an hour just to get out onto the Sharia Rameses to Abbassiya, sitting in the back of the car being nearly asphyxiated by the fumes that hung so thick on the air that we could taste the petrol. By the time we pulled up in front of the airport’s domestic terminal it was 2.0pm and our flight was due to leave at 2.20pm. We rushed through security and dashed over to the check-in desk, but the EgyptAir staff wouldn’t let us on the flight because we had arrived so late. After a lot of haggling we managed to get onto the next flight at 4.00pm but we had to pay for new tickets. Well, it couldn’t be helped but next time we will know to leave much more time for the traffic hold-ups.

Eventually we were airborne and it was a lovely flight down the east bank of the Nile to Luxor. I love this flight that lasts only about 45 minutes. We could see the whole Nile Valley laid out below us. To the east the wadis formed by dried-up river beds made the desert look like the surface of a walnut and the distant line of jagged eastern mountains with their strange shapes were turning red and gold as the sun began to set.

We landed in Luxor and had a very quick and smooth run through the airport. Domestic arrivals is very different from the hassle of international. We were met by a lady from ‘Egypt Property Sales’, who was Sam’s contact when arranging our accommodation. Rashad, who owns the property with his wife, drove us to the ‘Villa Mut’, our home in Luxor for the next couple of weeks.

The villa is very well decorated and very clean and seems to have most of the things we need. It was built in 2008 and probably its main point of favour is the fantastic view from the roof terrace that overlooks the whole of the precinct of the Temple of Mut, which is just to the south of the main part of Karnak Temple. We settled in and soon Abdul arrived with his brand new car that Sam has arranged to drive while we are here and bless him, he went off to do some shopping for us, at least for the basics for breakfast. For many years Abdul has been our driver, Mr Fixit and Sam’s travel partner when she takes groups to Egypt, helping to smooth the way through countless unexpected problems. He is also a good friend. Sam and I didn’t go out to eat as we were very tired, quite strange as we hadn’t really done anything all day except sit around. I tried to connect to the promised internet and although I was picking up the wireless hub I couldn’t get onto the web. Later I phoned home to check how things were and how the weather is in England now. I’m glad I’m here and not still in the big freeze.

Gearing ourselves up to go and meet Zahi Hawass this morning, Sam and I took a taxi to Zamalek. When we got there we were told that Dr Hawass was even busier than yesterday and couldn’t see us today. Our contact said that he would ask Dr Hawass to sign our permissions and fax them through to the Luxor office on Sunday. We are still not sure whether this was said just to get rid of us and we were already quite expecting to be refused, but haven’t given up all hope yet. We had a coffee at a very expensive and trendy coffee shop in Zamalek and were ready for the rest of the day.

We took a taxi once more through the horrible Cairo traffic – I can’t get used to how bad it is now – and Sam tells me that January is the worst month for smog, which isn’t hard to believe. We got out at Sultan Hasan mosque near the Citadel and when I took out my new Canon camera I found that the settings had all changed somehow and I couldn’t get it to work properly. I had to rely on my older camera, which is just as good, but having just bought a new one specially for this trip I was keen to use it. Also the sky was a grey leaden colour and this makes me feel cheated when I’m out with my camera in Egypt.

I wasn’t in the best of moods as we set off walking down the street towards the Sufi Theatre, past the little Mausoleum of al-Muzaffar Alam ad-Din Sangar. However, when we found that the Palace of Amir Taz (1352) is now open after restoration, I felt better. It looked very inviting and we couldn’t resist going inside. We were not even charged admission. Last time I had seen this building it was sheathed in scaffolding and polythene sheeting and was being restored by a joint Italian and Egyptian archaeological mission. Apparently the building had been severely damaged by an earthquake in 1994 and has had to be substantially re-built.

The next couple of hours were spent exploring the vast complex of the palace with its many rooms and corridors. It must have been a wonderful place in its heyday. All of the rooms are surrounding a central courtyard with palm trees and there are many staircases leading up to a warren of different levels of the palace. Some of the carved and painted ceilings are absolutely gorgeous and in several of the halls, massive wooden cartwheels of lights are hung. The Mamaluk Amirs were responsible for upkeep of a private army of soldiers who lived in the palace which also doubled as a fortified barracks. At one side of the courtyard there were two exhibitions, one about the Mamaluks in Cairo which was very interesting with several artefacts from the period on display as well as large informative history boards, and the other a large art exhibition from the Luxor Art Symposium with many lovely paintings.

Back out on the street we continued down to the Sabil-kuttab of Umm ‘Abbas, a more modern building constructed in 1857. The glittering ornate gold on the façade always amazes me.

Turning left past the Khanqah and mosque of Sheikhu (1355) we walked back along the street to the citadel – no mean feat in the busy traffic. The taxi ride back to the hotel took about three times longer than usual. I think part of the problem is that many of the roads are now one way and we were driving round in circles if were moving at all. We couldn’t even get out and walk as there was no room to open the doors. Back in the hotel we once again had a drink and sandwich on the terrace and downloaded our pictures from today.

The traffic was better later when we went to the Khan al-Khalili for dinner. Getting out near the al-Azhar mosque, we walked through the subway to the bazaar and to a restaurant we’d been to many times before, al-Nada, where I had a lovely meal of rice with crispy garlic, called fetah, and lots of spicy vegetables. We ate in a downstairs dining room which has been decorated with many old photographs of the Egyptian royal family and old Cairo scenes from the last century. Afterwards we went around the corner to a coffee shop near ‘Egyptian Pancakes’ where we sat for a couple of hours.

I’ve never seen this area so quiet. There were very few tourists around at this hour but several Egyptian couples or families with young children were out shopping. We were surrounded by the bright lights of the bazaar, the shops selling lavishly embroidered tourist galabeyas, rows of decorative shisha pipes and hanging lamps of every shape and size, lit by colourful bulbs and reflecting their surroundings in glittering dangling crystal droplets. Every five minutes one vendor or another would stop at our table and try to get us to buy something. Sam haggled for a while over some sabhas (prayer beads) and later we saw the ‘Rose lady’, a friend of Sam’s, who gave us both flowers before moving on to a table of Saudi gentlemen dressed in their distinctive white robes and chequered headgear. By Midnight the shops were closing and the place was becoming deserted, it was time to leave.

I didn’t sleep very well, probably too excited by being back in Cairo, until the early morning when I was woken at 8.30 by a man coming into my bedroom to clean. He was most apologetic, I suppose most tourists don’t lie around in bed this late, but we’d had quite a late night. I got up straight away and had a shower, a quick one because the water was cold, and went down to breakfast, where I was shortly joined by Sam. Breakfast here consists of the usual buffet of bread rolls and croissants, jams, a selection of cheeses, tomatoes, cucumber and hard boiled eggs. I asked for an omelette which was very nice. Sam had brought her cafetiere because we knew there were only little packets of Nescafe on offer here and I was grateful for that. In fact both of us had brought a couple of kilos of ground coffee in our luggage. When I looked out of my window earlier this morning it was grey and cloudy, but by the time we had finished breakfast the sun was shining. As we left the dining room I noticed that everywhere in the hotel, something is being painted or varnished. My only comment is that I wish they would get rid of the huge faded artificial flower arrangement in reception that looks like it has been there since the hotel was built. The Egyptians do like their plastic flowers!

We began the day by taking a taxi out to Abassiya to the SCA offices to pick up sites permissions we had applied for, which in past years was just a formality. When we got to the office however, we were told that things have changed and they are not issued there anymore, but at Zamalek. We took another taxi right across Cairo and over the river to Zamalek. We knew where the office was there but couldn’t remember the name of the street and we got out of the taxi in the wrong place. The traffic in Cairo was the worst I’ve ever seen, almost at a standstill. Unfortunately when we left the taxi we walked in the wrong direction and ended up walking right around the block before we found the SCA offices. Here we saw another officer that we have also met before and who now deals with the permissions, but he told us that we would have to come back tomorrow and see Zahi Hawass in person. I thought that Dr Hawass, as head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and known by the media as the ‘Indiana Jones of Egypt’, must have better things to do than sign permissions. Neither of us felt we wanted to come back, a little worried about being interviewed by him, but decided we must keep trying if we wanted to see any out of the way places and anyway it would seem rude not to. This was not a good start.

We next took a taxi back across the river to Midan Tahrir to go to the American University in Cairo (AUC) bookshop, one of our favourite ports of call in Cairo. Having risked our necks crossing the road to get there, we were told that it had moved. Having already walked around the streets of Zamalek, we set off again to find the bookshop, which turned out to be a couple of blocks away. The new bookshop is very smart and glossy, set on two floors, but they didn’t have many interesting titles in the Egyptology section that we didn’t already have. They were however, selling ‘Zahi Hawass Hats’ (his media trademark) and we joked about buying one each for tomorrow’s meeting.

Did I mention the roads? Traffic rules here are only observed when there is a policeman with a whistle and baton waving his arms and sometimes not even then. Maybe this is why he wears a hard helmet. Red traffic lights seem to be ignored and the several lanes of vehicles in Tahrir Square jockey for position by manoeuvring back and forth across the road. Horns are leant on continuously for seemingly no reason at all by bored or frustrated drivers. As you can imagine the noise and fumes are appalling, but at least the drivers for the most part miraculously manage to avoid collisions. Apparently to hit a pedestrian is the worst sin of all, so hoping this was true we left the bookshop and plunged again into the traffic. Once on the other side of the square we headed towards the Egyptian Museum and the Nile Hilton, now called the Nile Hotel. As we walked along the back of the hotel it all looked very closed, then we realised that the whole back of the building, where the restaurant terrace used to be, has been pulled down. We went further, towards the museum and around to the front of the hotel, only to be told by a security guard that the hotel is closed, probably for refurbishment. What a shame, this was one of my favourite places to chill out in Cairo. No more Nomad or Miss Egypt or el-Ahram, or shopping mall. This was the final straw for us in a day that has been a bit of a disaster, or at least a waste of precious time. After a quick glance at the huge crowd entering the Egyptian Museum, we took a taxi back to the Victoria, which took an hour through the clogged traffic in fumes that were particularly obnoxious – and it wasn’t even rush hour yet!

Back in the hotel Sam and I had coffee and a sandwich in the comfortable lounge. Afterwards I went into the ‘internet café’ with the intention of sending some emails, but I couldn’t remember my webmail password, so I had a quick look at a couple of sites and logged off. The hotel doesn’t offer guests wireless internet, but it does have a little cubby hole in the corner of a glass-roofed garden with a few aging computers.

Later we went to Hatay, a familiar nearby restaurant for dinner, a fantastic meal of rice and vegetables of all sorts, along with tahina and salads and the ubiquitous flat bread piled on the table. Afterwards we walked down to the same coffee shop as last night. The mosquitoes were biting again. I didn’t think I had been bitten last night but they have come up today and are very itchy. I bought some vitamin B complex which usually seems to work for me. I wasn’t expecting Cairo to be so warm at this time of year.

Up at 6.00am to pack, we had an early breakfast and left the Hotel Victoria by 8.00am. It’s odd to think we won’t becoming back to Cairo before we fly home. Probably just as well we’re leaving because there is rain forecast and it’s pretty dark and gloomy this morning. Everyone is hurrying about to avoid being caught in the imminent downpour. It took over an hour to get across the city through the rush-hour traffic and onto Sharia al-Ahram in Giza. Abdul was driving (even Sam refuses to drive in Cairo!) and he had decided to take the desert highway up to Minya as it is the quickest route. It was not nearly as boring as I had expected. We drove past the Giza Pyramids – this was our first real sight of them this trip, and out onto the Desert road past the turnoff to Bahariya and the Faiyum.

We actually skirted the Faiyum and could see its green swathes of palm trees and watery fields not far away. We also went past Hawara and Meidum Pyramids, seen in the distance from the highway. I Managed to get a fuzzy picture of Meidum as we flew past at 120km an hour. It seems to be much easier travelling in a private car than it is in a taxi and we were waved through all the checkpoints and had no police with us on the journey.

By 1.00pm we had arrived in Minya and began to look for a hotel. The cheaper ones were all full, so we ended up at the Mercure Nefertiti and Aton, which is quite expensive, even though Abdul negotiated Egyptian discount rate for us. Bless him, he does come in useful! Still, $35 per night is quite expensive for me in Egypt, though as I get older I am appreciating decent hotels (and hot showers) much more, no longer so happy to ‘rough it’. We had a Nile view room, with a balcony and it felt like pure luxury. I even had some laundry done. Bliss!

In Minya all tourists have to be accompanied everywhere by the police. I can never work out why this is because there is never any feeling of a threat here and it’s such a beautiful town. The Corniche has gardens and parks all the way along and it is full of old colonial-style buildings. And so clean after Cairo. Anyway, we wanted to go out to eat so we had to arrange with the police for a security man to come with us (plain clothed but his gun bulged from his belt for all to see). There aren’t many places to eat in Minya, and most of the local ones are understandably reluctant to serve tourists who have a police escort. We ended up at a KFC, which is just down the road from the hotel – not a brilliant meal and we had to complain about the coleslaw which was definitely off. Afterwards we persuaded our guard that he would like to spend the rest of the evening in a coffee shop, to which he readily agreed. The alternative for him would have been to go back and sit on a chair outside the hotel all night. We found a newly-opened coffee shop where a few locals were playing dominoes and back-gammon and had several cups of really good ahwa while Abdul and Mohammed our guard chatted and smoked shisha and Sam & I played Egyptian Trivia. The inevitably loud TV was playing Arabic pop music on a Sky channel. By about midnight we had got very cold, even in my fleece and scarf I was shivering and my toes were beginning to turn blue to match my sandals, so we made our way back to the hotel.

Today is probably our last day in Cairo so Sam and I decided to go to the Citadel as neither of us had been there for years. We took a taxi to the Citadel gates. I really don’t much like this massive fortress, with its military feel, but we wanted to visit the mosques there, so in we go. It was very windy and dusty and quite cold on top of the hill, but with spectacular views over Cairo all the way to the Giza Pyramids and we could pinpoint many of the places we had visited.

Our first stop was at the Mamaluk mosque of Sultan al-Nasr Mohammed, built in 1318 and notable for its two different minarets. One is near the main entrance and the other in the far corner so that the call to prayer could be projected into the northern enclosure to the troops. They are both unique stylistically with a great Persian influence. Inside the mosque it is very plain and simple because all the marble panels were carried off by Sultan Selim the Grim to Istanbul, although the qibla wall has now been restored. Many of the columns in the arches around the two-story arcade have been reused from various sources and you can see Ptolemaic, Roman and Christian capitals and bases. The ceiling decoration inside the arcade is a lovely light blue and silver.

Across the road is the Mohammed Ali Mosque, probably the most famous mosque in Cairo. Built in Turkish Imperial style, I love the shape of its great domes and towering minarets which dominate the Cairo skyline, but I find the interior far too ostentatious for my taste – very baroque in style. It was very crowded with tourists but I was pleased to note that women wearing shorts or with bare arms were made to wear long green robes to cover up, and were not allowed in without a head covering.

We had a mango juice in the cafe and walked around the rest of the citadel, looking at the gates and walls but we found that many areas were closed off. On the way out there was a bookshop. We tried to walk past but it drew us in like a magnet! I bought a French publication on the Luxor Tomb of Menna with some great pictures and also the Medieval Cairo guide maps I have been trying to find for ages. I bought three, but they didn’t have the fourth in the set, which covers the Citadel area. They were only EL15 each so I wasn’t too extravagant today.

It was soon time to go back to our hotel and after downloading pictures and having a siesta we went across the river to Mohandasin for dinner at Kadoura. This is a well-known fish restaurant which Sam loves, but they also do amazing salads. Being vegetarian I close my eyes and hurry past the slabs of hundreds of different fish (all eyeing me suspiciously), which you have to chose and they cook them fresh for you. The upstairs restaurant is very nice but was spoiled tonight by the inevitable TV with football blaring out. After the meal we went across the road to el-Shakowa coffee shop for our usual evening cups of Ahwa (Turkish coffee). I can’t get through a day without this! Got to bed around 2.00am. I Love driving around Cairo at night, it’s so full of life!

My friend Sam and I had thought of going out to Abu Rawash pyramids today but we both decided against it because there are still several sections of medieval Cairo we want to see. We got a taxi to the Bab al-Nasr and walked down to the Bab al-Fetou. These are two of the enormous gates in the city walls. The first mosque is Sultan al-Hakim, which is open to visitors, so we decided to don headscarves, take off shoes and venture inside. Our SCA permissions give us free entry to the Islamic monuments as well as Pharaonic, so we may as well make use of them.

The Fatimid mosque of Sultan al-Hakim is very beautiful – with its marble walls and floors it is light and airy compared to some of the others we have seen and has a wonderful air of serenity about it. Even though it is a tourist attraction it is also still used for prayers. History tells that, built in the 10th century it is one of the oldest remaining mosques in Cairo, built by the imam al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who enforced the confinement of women by forbidding cobblers to make shoes for them. He also forbade the eating of Mulukhiya and had all the honey in Cairo tipped into the Nile – pleasant chap! Since that time it has been variously used as a place of torture and prison for Crusader captives, a stables, a billet for Napoleon’s troops and a repository for Islamic art. During the Nasser period it was a boys school. From time to time it has also been used as a mosque and it must have been thoroughly cleansed to feel as good as it does today.

We followed the road further on, down the Sharia al-Mu’izz li-Din as far as Harat al-Darb, where we found a beautiful medieval street which reminded me a little of the Shambles in York. Here there were some restored merchants houses open to the public. Although we were supposed to be concentrating on mosques etc we decided to investigate.

Inside the doorway of Beyt al-Suhaymi, built in 1648, we came into the most beautiful house I have ever seen and we both fell in love with it instantly. It is a huge warren of rooms and passageways on three floors surrounding two shady courtyards with fountains. I could happily live within its walls for the rest of my life, and wouldn’t even mind being confined to the Harem quarters because it’s amazing how much the women could see and hear from behind their mushrabiya-screened windows. The air is thick with a feeling of medieval intrigue and we spent a happy couple of hours getting frequently lost in the dark interconnecting staircases and passages, which would sometimes end in a bedroom, bathroom or big audience hall.

It’s little gems and surprises like this which makes the ‘Cairo Experience’ so enjoyable. By now it was getting late. We had arranged to meet Abdul in Fishawi’s coffee shop in the Khan el-Kalili and were already an hour past the arranged time, so wandered down in that direction along my favourite street with its Complex of Qalamun, Sabil-Khutab of Katkhuda and the lovely little al-Ahmar mosque, only stopping briefly to take pictures. I think the Beyt Suhaymi had blown both our minds and finished us for domes and minarets for today. Taking a shortcut through the back of the Khan el-Khalili, and getting only slightly lost, we found a wonderful stone shop on the way. Sam bought some amethyst prayer beads and I bought a lovely lapis bead necklace for LE100, because my last one broke and I lost some of the beads. I love lapis.

We eventually arrived at Fishawi’s. This is one of Cairo’s most famous coffee shops, though I had never been here during the day before. It’s in a narrow alleyway with people walking through all the time selling things, and we know many of the vendors quite well. Abdul had gone off somewhere so we sat for an hour and a half watching the world go by until it got dark.

Because of the long day yesterday we didn’t get down to breakfast until quite late today. A coach full of German tourists had arrived overnight and so there wasn’t much food left on the buffet when we got to the dining room. Sam and I decided to do the first of our ‘Islamic walks’ today as Friday is Abdul’s day off when he goes to the mosque. We took a taxi to Sultan Hassan Mosque and getting out at the foot of the Citadel, we walked around the huge walls looking for the remains of the medieval amphitheatre wall that we had read about. I think we found it, but it was a building site with no more than a couple of short courses of stone blocks left so we couldn’t be certain. It was here where the great Sultans and Pashas used to have their games and horse races and train their armies.

Sam and I walked on southwards, towards Sayyida Aisha Mosque. Being Friday there were crowds of people here in the square under the Salah Salim flyover. We wanted to investigate the tombs and mausoleums in the southern end of the ‘City of the Dead’, known as the Southern Qarafa. During the last few visits to Cairo we have become fascinated by Islamic architecture and history – something most tourists ignore, but it makes a wonderful contrast to the ancient Egyptian monuments. Neither Sam or I are particularly interested in the Pyramids, which we have seen many times, preferring the ancient temples and tombs, so Islamic Cairo is a good alternative. We went up a little side street and were invited to go into the cemetery by an old woman, so guessed it must be OK. We found ourselves in the complex of Qawsun (14th century), with its domes and minarets and by the Northern minaret of al-Sultaniya we followed the path through to the tomb of Ali Badr al-Dinal-Qarafi. We had to be careful not to step on graves all around the area. Some women asked us if we needed the key to enter some of the mausoleums, which we politely refused, but took some photographs before leaving. This felt much better than some of the more threatening areas of the Qarafa we have been in, but I’m never very comfortable about being here, where many of Cairo’s poorest people live in make-shift houses among the tombs.

Back out to the main road and walked down from Sayyida Aisha Mosque to Sayyida Nafisa Mosque. There were many Friday crowds here too, both inside and outside the mosques. We found it amusing to watch the women waiting for their men outside their section of the mosque (they have separate entrances) and the women were giggling and standing on tiptoe peering through the high windows trying to catch a glimpse of the men inside – very reverential I thought!

We found ourselves in yet another cemetery so turned around to walk down Sharia al-Khalifa, past the huge almost derelict domes of al-Ashraf al-Khalil, Fatima Khatun, Sayyida Ruqayya, Shagaret al-Durr and down to the Mosque of Sayyida Sukayna. There are many women commemorated in this street. We were not bothered by anyone – sometimes in the past I have felt quite out of place because tourists do not usually enter these areas, but today it was surprisingly peaceful and hassle-free.

The street came out near the big Ibn Tulun mosque which we have visited before, so we got a taxi over to the Nile Hilton for a late lunch and wandered around the shopping arcade for a while. Later we went back to our hotel to download and sort out pictures I’ve taken so far – it’s surprising how time-consuming this is. We were both fairly tired so decided to eat in the hotel and sat talking in the bar over a bottle of wine until about 1.00am.

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